The artistic directors of MYArt Film Festival would like to express their great satisfaction with the quantity and quality of entries submitted to the three competition sections of the festival, documentaries and short films in particular.

Many works were sent in, even though the submission period was particularly short. This demonstrates a high level of interest and availability of films produced in the Mediterranean countries on the themes selected for this first edition of the festival.

However, only a few works were submitted for the section Non-Profit Short Film, which led the artistic directors to remove the section from the festival. Instead, it was with great surprise that we received a large number of short, high quality documentaries. For this reason, the prize for Non Profit Short Film, with the agreement of the prize funders, Fondazione Migrantes, has been reassigned to the new competition category that we have named “Shortdoc”.

In total, more that 150 works were evaluated by the artistic directors, arriving from Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Croatia, Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Kosovo, Spain, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland, Canada and, naturally, Italy. Works produced by Calabrian directors or set in Calabria were also well-represented.

After the selection process,13 documentaries, 10 short films and 10 short documentaries have been admitted.

The directors of the festival believe that this number will be sufficient to provide a panorama of independent cinema on the themes treated: from integration to war, from torture to the complexity of daily life in Mediterranean countries.

We are looking forward to 28-30th April to share these stimulating and high quality works with you, as well as to reflect on the greatest challenge that we need to take on in the next decades as citizens of these countries.